The Cardano ecosystem continues to achieve several milestones, with the platform’s native token ADA recently rising to become the fourth highest cryptocurrency in market capitalization.
Amid the growth, data provided by Pooltool, a Cardano data aggregating tool, indicates that ADA’s staking wallets as of August 18, 2021, are at 754,978. Compared to June 3, 2021 figures, the platform has added 146,506 wallets representing a growth of about 24%.
The wallets translate to $46.91 billion in ADA’s staked value accounting for 71.25% of the $65.8 billion total supply.
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The increase in Cardano’s total staked wallets comes ahead of the highly anticipated Alonzo Purple upgrade slated for September 12. The announcement powered ADA’s price to gain trading at $2.01 by press time with a market cap of $65 billion. The asset is now looking at surpassing the $2.39 all-time high attained in May.
Drivers for Cardano’s staking wallets growth
Cardano is benefitting from the general interest around staking within the crypto market. In July, banking giant JPMorgan released a report projecting that the staking industry would be worth $40 billion in rewards by 2025. As a pioneer of staking, ADA is benefitting from the positive press.
Recently, ADA staking has been made available to most investors with several platforms increasingly giving investors exposure to Cardano staking. Recently, Canada’s publicly-traded company iMining included Cardano to its list of supported assets for its staking services. The initiative is targeting institutional investors. Elsewhere, investors can stake ADA through the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.
The growth in ADA-staked wallets can also be attributed to Cardano’s staking model. The platform offers consistent rewards that are often distributed to stakers. Additionally, ADA is simple to understand and more accessible to the average investor while offering an ower barrier to entry than competitors.
Furthermore, the upcoming upgrade correlates with increased activity on the Cardano network that has impacted the token’s price. The upcoming September upgrade will see the network integrate smart contracts. The smart contract introduction is a significant milestone for the network competing directly with Ethereum. This latest update follows the White hard fork.
According to the CEO of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, users will be able to run smart contracts the moment hard fork comes on.
Scammers target Cardano
As Cardano continues to record growth, the network has become a target of scammers.
Recently, a fake website allegedly belonging to the Daedalus crypto wallet was marketed on the digital distribution platform Discord with the intention to scam users of their ADA holdings.
The website mirrored the verified Daedalus website while promising users a new upgraded wallet with the ability to directly convert crypto into fiat.
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